Dancing Goat Distillery won an ASCOT for their Limousin Rye, which is aged in three different barrels which is insane. Their head distiller, Nick “Brady Baby” Maas, has a family history of distillation and is a remarkable repository of whiskey lore. Maas spent a few years behind the bar before returning to the family business of distillation (Maas’ father is Tom Maas, and his grandfather was Duane Maas). This interview went delightfully off rails with every question as All American Whiskey chased Maas down a riveting rabbit hole of history and hilarious factotum delivered at 300 miles an hour with enough ribald unbridled cursing to make us feel like we’d found our spirit animal.
What whiskey first made you say fuck yeah?
HIGH WEST BOURYE. I was in Chicago. Batch 15B11. It opened my ideas to sweetness and balance. We were already talking about me leaving my industry to open a distillery. That inspired me to make the literal whiskey I make today. It was a blend of 9-year-old MGP 20% rye bourbon, 13-year-old straight rye 95-5, and 17-year-old 95-5 from MGP. The 13-year-old would be an LDI (Lawrenceburg Distillers International) and the 17-year-old might have been an actual Diageo who bought Seagrams.
If you weren’t making whiskey, you’d probably be . . .
I’d be working in weed. 100%. I was making closed-loop hexane extracting systems when I was in college. Or perfume. Commercial perfume and flavor manufacturing are absolutely buku bonkers manufacturing processes.
What’s a fucked up way you drink whiskey you probably wouldn’t tell anyone if you weren’t filling out this questionnaire?
Really early in the morning [insane cackling]. I’m a blender. I’m a distiller. I’m a podunk moonshiner at the end of the day. But it’s never too early in the morning. Well, the stupidest way was drinking it as a 60% diluted DSS (distilled spirit specialty).
What’s a fucked up way someone you know drinks whiskey that makes you want to throw them off a cliff and seriously, Jesus Hashtag Christ, why, Darryll? Why?
My boy Davìd Muir drinks it out of a fucking orange. He baby sits it too. He’ll nurse that all night with a little clementine in his hand like a baby
What song will get you onto the floor no matter what?
“Drop ’em Out” Wheeler Walker Junior.
Give a quote from a movie you obsess over:
“Is she still in the house? You stealer you!” –Wedding Crashers.
Besides making whiskey, what do you do right?
Killing coyotes.
Sum up the essence of great whiskey with a single word.
Rye. It’s got to have rye in it.
Whiskey with an e or whiskey without an e?
Either. I’m a global whisky fan.
What moment during your process strikes you as perfect?
Pitching anti-foam before I run my column.
List three whiskies you love that aren’t yours.
Name the single most underrated or overlooked distillery in your state.
Obviously, I think I’m overlooked and underappreciated but that’s part of being a human. The most famous in our state is Joe Henry Bourbon. They’re an NDP and they’ve had their bourbon made all their life in the 45th Parallel and a lot of people just don’t know who they are, and nobody knows they make all the Henry.
Name a whiskey you think our readers never heard of.
Starward Australian single malt whisky. They do some crazy shit They only age in used wine barrels and they re-char them all. They’re some crazy motherfuckers.
What was your most embarrassing mistake making whiskey?
I’ve dumped ferments down the drain. 240-gallon ferments. Just gone. When I was really young I dropped a lock into a barrel and I thought it was stainless steel so I didn’t tell anybody. I just figured eventually I’d get it back. It turned the whiskey black. My grandaddy came for my ass and they asked me what happened, and I told them I’d dropped a Master Lock into the tank. They let me sweat. Finally, one of our workers says “get over here. You need to go out to get all the evaporated milk you can find.” I bought everything in the county and we poured it into the tank and then filtered it out. It bonded it with iron and pulled it out of the whiskey. Turned it back to the right color. That’s some real redneck chemistry right there.
What’s a moment in your life that made you realize life is goddam beautiful?
The birth of my daughter, Veda. It broke me as a man. Everything I thought I’d ever valued—strength. rigidity, everything I’d latched on to that I thought made a man and made him successful was gone in a minute. I looked at my baby and at her mother and I thought in my head holy crap she just did that for her. I used to think everyone was an obstacle in my day. The world was out to kick me in the teeth and my only goal was to kick back. But I learned the day I had Veda that everyone is someone’s child, and everyone deserves the same patience and understanding as a child. My daughter deserved that. My wife deserved that. You deserve that.
Who would you like to see answer these questions?
There’s only one answer. Kyle Stroud at Copper Cane Provisions. It’s a new distillery out of Modesto Ca.
Follow Dancing Goat Distillery
